Tattoos – part 1

Twice in the last week, I’ve been asked if I have any. “You seem like a tattoo kind of guy,” said one (very hot) woman, fresh off adding a new tattoo to her burgeoning collection.

Occasionally I remind readers that the glimpses you get of me are incomplete, partial, curated.

It’s safe to say, no one who has met me would say, “you seem like a tattoo kind of guy.”

Which isn’t to say I haven’t thought about it. Years ago, some friends and T and I – none of us tattooed or ‘tattoo kind of people’ – played a little game. Each of us answered the question, “If you were to get one word tattooed anywhere on your body, what would you have tattooed where?”

I won’t tell you their answers, but I’ll tell you mine: I would have the word “Grey” tattooed on my inner thigh. Or maybe “Gray.”

I’ve written before about my relationship to the word, to the concept. There’s not much to add, except to reassert, as I do from time to time, that I’m a big believer in grey, in shadings, in the principle that black and white is rarely a rewarding way in which to see things (other than porn).

I was thirty before I finally decided on a tattoo I felt I could live with for the rest of my life. Maybe you just haven’t found the perfect tattoo design or idea 🙂 everybody is a tattoo kind of person in my book. It’s just up to them to decide whether they want one or not.

I wasn’t aware that there was ‘a kind of person for tattoos’. A friend of mine, in her 60s I’d say, is considering her first tattoo… to hide breast reconstructive surgery scars. And I assure you, she’s not a ‘tattoo type’.
So, Grey on your inner thigh? Such a sensitive area, must be painful…